Tag Archives: postcolonial

Colonialism, Debates, Democracy, Politics

The Indian Nation State and Its Discontents: Ravindra K. Jain

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Guest post by RAVINDRA K. JAIN

ABSTRACT

The nation-state that is the Indian Union comprises a diversity of socio-cultural minorities and a ruling majority. The decoupling of nation and state highlights a contradiction rather than the integration of socio-cultural diversities and political functions of governance. This contradiction is marked by a double deficit of democracy, namely, authoritarianism and citizenship. A potted history of three phases of modern India explores the roots, symptoms and provenance of this democratic deficit in the present conjuncture.

Keywords Apologetic patriotism; nation state and state-nation; late colonial, early post colonial and Hindutva phases; nationalism and social polity; caste, class and power.

I analyse the Indian State sociologically in three phases of continuous chronological succession: A. The Late Colonial, B. The Paternal post-colonial and C. The current Hindutva. Each phase is characterized by a dual deficit: authoritarianism and citizenship. In order to elucidate the origin and perpetuation of this dual deficit, I would delve into the potted history of each phase. Continue reading The Indian Nation State and Its Discontents: Ravindra K. Jain →

Capitalism, Debates, Theory

Political Society and the Fable of Primitive Accumulation

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This is a response to Partha Chatterjee, whose recent essay we had posted for further debate.

Partha’s work has been a central reference point for the work of many of us and his notion of ‘political society’ has provided an unprecedented opening, a possibility – that of thinking the ‘unthinkable’. I would go so far as to say that the enunciation of the idea of ‘political society’ has been one of the most important conceptual interventions of ‘postcolonial’ political theory – that is to say, political (and social theory) produced from/in the postcolonial world; an intervention in theory that for the first time brings in the postcolonial experience into its very heart. I shall even claim that the potential and possibilities of this concept are of far wider applicability than the geographical ‘third world’ and can provide a lens for looking at the so-called first world itself. But on that more later. Continue reading Political Society and the Fable of Primitive Accumulation →